History Calls Marion Jones

Sprinter/long Jumper Not Shy In Predicting 5 Olympic Golds

July 19, 1998|By Philip Hersh, Tribune Olympic Sports Writer.

EUGENE, Ore. — They will be part of the legend, the one Marion Jones almost is certain to become, the one that she constructs in leaps and bounds like the one she took at the Prefontaine Classic here in May, the one she constructs at a speed that may startle even New Yorkers in the next couple of days at the Goodwill Games.

We are talking about anecdotes, the stuff of sagas that will be told and retold, the way Jones' story will be in the leadup to the 2000 Olympics and then, maybe, through sporting eternity. She already is talking about five gold medals at the Sydney Games, in the sprints, long jump and relays, and that would immediately give these plot details mythic quality.

There is the one about the first day her coach Trevor Graham, a 1988 Olympic 400-meter runner for Jamaica, was asked to work with her.

Jones had just returned to track and field full time, having earned a degree and an NCAA basketball title at the University of North Carolina. This was in May of last year, when Graham was coaching another runner at the same track where Jones and her fiance, Olympic shot putter C.J. Hunter, were working out.

Graham made a few suggestions, and they worked, and then he was being asked to coach Jones full time.

"When I went home that night, I couldn't sleep," Graham said. "I started pulling out tapes of FloJo (Florence Griffith Joyner) and Gail Devers and Merlene Ottey to watch what made them great. I saw this coming from the first day, and I knew it wasn't going to take that long."

In a month Jones had become the first woman in nine years to win the 100 meters and long jump at the U.S. championships. In three months she was world champion in the 100. At the end of the 1997, she had world-leading times in the 100 and 200 and was voted woman of the year in track and field.

Those performances led to the anecdote about the TV network crew that came to film Jones last spring at her home in Apex, N.C. They got into a cab and asked the driver to take them to the North Carolina State track to see Marion Jones. "No, no, no," the driver protested, "Marion Jones is our point guard."

Marion Jones is going to change the way people know track in North Carolina and, the sport's leaders hope, in the U.S. as well. That she chose track over a career in one of the women's pro basketball leagues is a statement in itself.

"Marion sends the message to young kids that there is a future in track and field and that you can make a living in the sport after college," said Devers, two-time Olympic champion at 100 meters.

It is a role Jones does not shun, even if it involves finding a balance between humility and bravado, even if it means bridging the protective wall put up by Hunter, 29, a divorced father of two whom she will marry Oct. 3. He is a forbidding presence: 6 feet 1 inch, 330 pounds, with a baleful demeanor that recalls Sonny Liston and contrasts sorely with Jones' easy smile.

Being the icon for sport badly in need of converts is no easy task for a 22-year-old, even one whose talent is so prodigious it has invoked comparisons to Carl Lewis and should earn her at least $1 million in 1998.

"I'm tired of that comparison (with Lewis)," Jones said. "I want to be known for myself. I want to be remembered as one of the greatest athletes that ever lived. I want a little boy in 40 years to look back and say, `I want to run like Marion Jones.' "

There are few women able to run and jump anything like her. This season Jones has the eight fastest times in the world at 100 meters, topped by two of 10.71 seconds; the three fastest in the 200, topped by 21.98; and the two longest jumps, topped by the 23 feet 11 3/4 inches.

To a Prefontaine rival who suggested Jones would be "really dangerous" if she learned how to land, Jones responded, "If you learned how to run, so could you."

Jones will run but not jump in the fourth Goodwill Games, which opened Saturday with a ceremony at Madison Square Garden.

The Goodwill Games are a 15-day multisport competition, at sites in Manhattan and Long Island, that means little to anyone but programmers at Turner Sports. Created by Ted Turner in 1986 as a way to thaw Cold War relations with the former Soviet Union, the event has been a $109 million loser to Turner's company.

The four days of Goodwill track and field, which begin Sunday at the Mitchell Field Athletic Complex on Long Island, should be the one event of significance. The preliminary entry lists include many of the world's biggest names.

For Jones, scheduled to run the 100 Sunday and the 200 Monday, the attention that comes from doing anything in New York likely will provide her first major exposure in the United States.

"What she is doing is great for our sport and great in particular for women's sports," Devers said. "She should be around a long time."